by Rabbi David Rosen

There were many dimensions to the historic Papal visit in the year 2000 to Israel and the region. Beyond his personal pilgrimage, his visit sought to affirm and strengthen the Christian presence in the Holy Land. There were  issues of intra-Christian relations and of Christian-Muslim relations to address; as well as the Pope's desire to advance the peace process which inevitably necessitated taking into account the different national interests, aspirations and claims, of the parties involved.

However there can be no doubt that the Catholic-Jewish aspect of the visit was both central to Pope John Paul II's intentions and certainly featured accordingly in the world media. In this regard in particular, we witnessed the skill of Pope John Paul II's use of the power of the visual image that he has utilized so advantageously throughout his pontificate. This is not at all to minimize the substance and significance of his own statements and Vatican documents to which I will refer, but rather to clarify that John Paul II appreciates that the visual image enables the message to be conveyed to a far greater extent and degree. Thus when he visited the Great Synagogue in Rome in 1986, most of what he said he had expressed previously. Nevertheless when it was "seen", it was "heard" in the world at large as never before.

Similarly, the repudiation of anti-Semitism that he has condemned time and again as a sin against God and man; his identification with Jewish suffering especially in the Shoah; his expressions of contrition for past Christian hostility and violence towards Jews; his understanding of what Israel means for the Jewish people and thus the importance of having established full relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel in the context of Catholic reconciliation with the Jewish people; all this had been said and done well before the Papal visit to Israel.

However the images of the Pope at Yad Vashem and at the Western Wall, as well as at the State receptions at Ben-Gurion airport and at the President's residence, conveyed to the world at large the reality of this amazing transformation in Catholic teaching and attitudes toward the Jewish people as never before.

Particularly notable was the impact of these and other images upon the people of Israel. Jewish Israelis do not live in a Christian environment and do not meet modern Christians as a matter of course. Even when they travel abroad, their encounters are overwhelmingly with non-Jews as such, rather than with Christians. As Christianity is basically irrelevant to the vast majority of them, the images that they carry with them have primarily been taken from the tragic past. Precisely because Israelis had such little knowledge of the changes that have occurred in the last thirty-five years, the papal visit startled many into discovery of the fact that the Catholic Church is not only no longer hostile towards Jewry, but that it seeks a positive and respectful relationship with the people that John Paul II has described as "the (Church's) dearly beloved elder brothers of the original covenant never revoked by God."

This reality, which most Israelis only discovered as a result of the Papal visit, is of course the product of a remarkable transformation in Catholic attitudes and teaching. Throughout the course of history, Christianity overwhelming presented the Jews as rejected by God, replaced by the Church and punished to suffer and wander for their failure to recognize the Christian faith claim. This attitude underlay the hostility of the Catholic Church to the very idea of the return of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland to reestablish its sovereignty there.

While the spirit of modern scholarly research had much to do with new tendencies already in the earlier part of the century towards a reappraisal of Catholic teaching concerning the Jews, it was both the impact of the Shoah as well as the personal commitment of Pope John XXIII that led to the radical break with this past theology. He was undoubtedly influenced both by his experiences during World War II and by his personal encounters on this subject, especially with Jules Isaac.

Accordingly this was one of the central issues that John XXIII sought inter alia to address in convening the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. As a result, the document known as "Nostra Aetate" that was promulgated in 1965, categorically repudiated "the teaching of contempt" towards the Jewish People and ushered in the "positive revolution" in Church teaching regarding the Jewish people and Judaism, that has continued for more than thirty years. In this document, the Church rejected the idea of Jewish corporate and continuous responsibility for the death of Jesus; it affirmed the Divine Covenant with the Jewish people as eternal and unbroken; and it condemned anti-Semitism.

Since "Nostra Aetate" the Vatican, and Pope John Paul II in particular,  deepened the process of Catholic reconciliation with the Jewish People, affirming a special bond with it and condemning unequivocally the sin of anti-Semitism. In 1990, the Pope also confirmed the declaration made in Prague by Cardinal Cassidy, President of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, that "the fact that anti-Semitism has found a place in Christian thought and teaching, demands an act of Teshuvah (repentance) on its part." That same year, when receiving the first Ambassador of a United Germany, Pope John Paul II said "for Christians the heavy burden of guilt for the murder of the Jewish people must be an enduring call to repentance; thereby we can overcome every form of anti-Semitism and establish a new relationship with our kindred nation of the Old Covenant."

Amongst the notable Vatican milestones since "Nostra Aetate" are the 1975 Guidelines that greatly elaborated upon the former and the document entitled The Common Bond: Christians and Jews - Notes for Preaching and Teaching, issued in 1985 by the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Therein, for the first time in an official Vatican document, the importance of the State of Israel for the Jewish people and its self-identity was recognized. Indeed, Pope John Paul II had already showed his personal recognition of the centrality of Israel for Jews in his Apostolic letter "Redemptionis Anno" (20 April 1984) and similarly in his address to leaders of the Jewish community in Miami (11 September 1987) when he declared that "... After the tragic extermination of the Shoah, the Jewish people began a new period in their history. They have a right to a homeland, as does any civil nation, according to international law [which is what we seek] for the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel...." In 1994 (in an interview published in Parade magazine), he declared that "it must be understood that the Jews, who for thousands of years were dispersed among the nations of the world decided to return to the land of their ancestors. This is their right!"

Accordingly, the normalization of relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel was logically long called for as the natural outcome of these profound changes in theology and attitudes. Moreover for many years before the establishment of diplomatic ties, the Holy See had categorically stated that there were no theological barriers to its full normalization of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.

However what had held the Vatican back in this regard was the fact that the Church has communities, institutions and assets in Arab and other Muslim societies, and it feared a backlash from any rapprochement with the State of Israel.

The Middle East Peace Process that commenced after the Gulf War in 1991, opened up new opportunities for bilateral relations. At a press conference announcing the establishment of the Permanent Bilateral Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel in the summer of 1992, Vatican spokesperson Joachin Navarro-Valls said in answer to a question, "The Arabs including the Palestinians are talking to the Israelis, why shouldn't we!" Accordingly there was no longer a fear of Arab backlash and the Vatican had many good reasons for wishing to advance formal relations with Israel.

Aside from demonstrating the genuineness of its insistence that there were no longer any theological barriers in the way of full relations with the State of Israel, the Holy See desired to be represented in the negotiations over the future of the region that would have bearing on its own interests, e.g., regarding Jerusalem, as well as to advance the interests of its communities in the Holy Land. The negotiations of the Bilateral Commission achieved fruition with the signing of the Fundamental Agreement between the State of Israel and the Holy See at the end of 1993, which led to the subsequent exchange of Ambassadors. This was facilitated in no small part by the weight of his personal authority that Pope John Paul II lent to ensuring the success of those negotiations, recognizing their importance for Catholic-Jewish reconciliation as indicated in the Preamble to the Fundamental Agreement itself.

While this meant a new era of an Israel-Vatican dialogue, an official International Jewish-Catholic Liaison Committee (ILC) had been functioning for two and a half decades beforehand. The Jewish partners had seen their primary goal in this framework as working to ensure that the changes in Catholic theology be introduced and implemented globally in Catholic educational policy and programs, combating anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. They had also seen it as their responsibility to impress upon the Holy See the importance of establishing full relations with the State of Israel for the Catholic-Jewish relationship itself. However the dialogue also focused upon the need to advance mutual understanding and collaboration for the sake of shared values. Accordingly ILC meetings addressed and produced joint statements on such themes as the family, the sanctity of human life and ecological and environmental issues.

The establishment of full bilateral relations between the State of Israel  and the Holy See and the  latter's unequivocal stand against anti-Semitism were in many respects the fruit of this dialogue even if they were facilitated by international developments.

For those who knew little or nothing of how far the Catholic-Jewish dialogue has advanced over the last three and a half decades, especially in the USA, the Papal visit opened up their eyes to a changed reality. For those educated and unprejudiced about this dialogue and its achievements, the Papal visit was but confirmation and support for what has taken place and continues to do so.

Unquestionably, the aforementioned impact of the visit on Israeli society will facilitate greater Israeli understanding of and support for the dialogue. This was already evidenced in the circular of the Director General of the Ministry of Education that went out to Israeli schools in the wake of the Papal visit, encouraging discussion on the changes in Christian-Jewish relations together with relevant texts, both classical and modern. Not least of all, at the Pope's initiative, the Vatican established a bilateral commission for dialogue with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, reflecting a new relationship between the respective religious establishments.

As Prime Minister Ehud Barak indicated in his remarks to the Pope at Yad Vashem, it is not possible to put the past behind us overnight. Undoubtedly, there remain not only the profound theological differences that keep our two faith communities apart, but also differences concerning historical memory and interpretation of the past. Nevertheless, we have undeniably entered a new era in Catholic-Jewish relations in which the visit of John Paul II to Israel will be seen as a climactic milestone along that historic journey of reconciliation and fruitful collaboration.

Rabbi David Rosen heads the AJC's Department of Religious Affairs. He is Chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious consultations (IJCIC) and is the Chief Rabbinate of Israel's  Honorary Advisor on Interreligious Affairs.